Proyecto Educativo

One of the crucial terms for reading skill is word recognition process which is defined as “accessing and

Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204

Vol. 9, Issue 1, January2019

Page 44

recognizing words” (Lems, Miller and Soro, 2010: 65) or “process of extracting lexical information from graphic displays of the words” (Koda, 2005: 29). When the graphemes are converted into phonemes reading and speaking skills and thus communication among the individuals occurs. This conversion and the process during this conversion are crucial for OD which deals with the correspondence between the letters and the sounds. While this conversion is one-to-one or close to one-to-one in shallow orthographies, this process occurs in a longer time period. This affects the duration of learning to read period in L1 and the speed and effectiveness in L2 learning process. The association between the word recognition and comprehension can be explained via effectiveness and facilitation, in other words comprehension gets better when word recognition is efficient. Besides, orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic components, all of which are interrelated, are crucial for this process (Koda, 2005: 29; Mattingly, 1984: 10).

The readers benefit from the word recognition process as early as the orthography of the language allows them to do so (Grabe, 2009: 110). There are two processes in the word recognition process: comprehension of the words and recognizing the sound – in other words semantic access and phonological decoding both of which are related to the orthographical process due to the activation of the visual input and analysis of the graphic symbols (Koda, 2005:31-32).

Since perception, comprehension, organization and rearrangement phases are essential for accessing the word; word recognition is a significant process both for L1 and L2 readers.

2.1.2 Context and Comprehension

As words might have different meanings in any language, the meaning of a word can differ according to the text. Therefore, synonyms, heteronyms, idiomatic usages or metaphoric expressions can lead ambiguity. For instance, although the spelling and the pronunciation of the word “lead” are exactly the same, it has two different meanings: “to conduct” and “a metal”. A reader who is aware of this difference and whose language development has been completed won’t encounter a problem when he comes across with “lead” in any passage. This also gives information about the lexical competency of the reader. This competency has different dimensions in L1 and L2 reading processes. While the reader is expected to have a sound lexical background of his mother tongue, the reader is supposed to have a considerable understanding of L2 and know the lexical and contextual usages of the vocabulary. Related to the topic of this study any similarities or differences between L1 and L2 directly affect this process.

The context limits the lexical dimension of the vocabulary and thus the reader can reach the most suitable meaning of the word. Knowledge on semantic facilitates the contextual aspects. And it should be underlined that semantic knowledge is preceded contextual facilitation in this process. In other words, there is a close relationship between the comprehension of the context and vocabulary choice (Koda, 2005: 31 and 34-35). 2.1.3 Linguistic Awareness

One of the requirements of both L1 acquisition and L2 learning is linguistic awareness which can be defined as “aspect of sophistication about the language” (Liberman et al., 1978: 78), “metalinguistic consciousness of certain aspects of primary linguistic activity” (Mattingly, 1984: 9) or "intuitions of informants” (Mattingly, 1992: 13). Linguistic awareness can be studied under phonological, morphologic and syntactic subtitles. Since listening and speaking skills are developed much earlier than the reading and writing skills in the individuals, people tend to know the sounds first. Therefore children have to be aware of the aspects of the spoken language such as word, syllable or phoneme before making a connection between the writing systems and the speaking systems. This phonological awareness, which can be considered as a positive transfer for both in L1 and L2, facilitates word recognition or spelling processes of the reader. Besides, young children with a certain level of phonological awareness in L1 tend to be more effective in developing L2 (Durgunoğlu, 2002: 192-193 and 201).

Linguistic activities can be grouped as primary and secondary activities. Since the acquisition processes of speaking and listening are natural they can be included in the primary linguistic activities, reading is within the secondary activities. The main elements of the primary linguistic activities can be linked to the metalinguistic aspect (Mattingly, 1984: 9). A similar classification is also done by Liberman et al. (1978: 68) as more natural requiring sophistication on orthographical knowledge – i.e. listening and speaking – and less natural which occurs naturally even unconsciously – i.e. reading and writing.

The metalinguistic insight which can be defined as syntactic awareness is attributed to the abilities of the

Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204

Vol. 9, Issue 1, January2019

Page 45

individuals – especially the young children – on the awareness of grammatical structure of a sentence. That is, children’s realizing mistakes in a sentence without knowing any grammatical rules can be explained by syntactic awareness. Thus, it can be inferred that human beings are programmed in terms of linguistic awareness (Durgunoğlu, 2002: 194-195).

2.1.4 Decoding - Recoding

The reader goes through different mental processes depending on the orthography of the language in which he is reading. One of these processes is dealing with the codes of the words where the reader has to match the phonemes he has added to his lexicon after hearing in his L1 to the graphemes. This process can be either hard or easy depending on the orthography. For instance, the reader can read the words he has never seen before in the alphabetic writing systems as he can match the structure of the written word with the morpho- phonological representation of the spoken word in his lexicon (Liberman et al., 1978: 78).

“Decoding” can be identified as recognizing the sounds and meaning of words in a text (Lems, et.al, 2010: 65). Although decoding is related to the phonological and morphological information and word recognition is related to the sounds and meaning of the words, they are generally used interchangeably (Grabe, 2009: 111; Koda, 2005: 29). On the other hand “recoding” can be defined as writing the words by listening to the sounds (Lems, et.al, 2010: 65). The orthographical differences among the languages occur based on the visual recoding the phonological and morphological systems of the languages and these differences affect the speed and level of comprehension (Grabe, 2009: 111).

These processes of decoding and recoding can vary depending on the orthographies of the languages. For instance in deep orthographies recoding is not always actualized based on the phonemes but sometimes the words are written by heart (Lems, et.al, 2010: 65). In the literature “heal” and “health” are frequently given as examples. Chomsky, who used them for the first time, argues that representation of the orthographical transcription of a word tends to differ based on the mental lexicon of the speaker or the hearer. Besides, as the reader is familiar with the phonology of the language, the reflection of the word in the personal lexicon corresponds to the orthographical representation (cit. Liberman et al., 1978: 68-69).

To sum up, the above mentioned terms related to the OD are interrelated. Improvement or regression of the word recognition process depending on phonological awareness and positive or negative impact of the both on comprehension proves this interrelationship. Likewise, phonological decoding and semantics are closely related since the earlier requires accessing, storing and retrieving phonological information (Koda, 2005:33) In shallow orthographies the reader is more advantageous while reading, writing, speaking and listening because of the phoneme-letter correspondence. In their study Öney and Durgunoğlu (1997) conducted phonological awareness, letter recognition, word and pseudo word recognition, spelling, syntactic awareness, and listening comprehension tests on the first grade children in order to find out the effects of these factors on the development of word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension. They also observed how children learn how to read and write in Turkish and revealed that there is a systematic correspondence between the orthography and phonology of Turkish due to the shallow orthography of the language. The obtained results present that in a language with a transparent orthography earlier phases of the word recognition skills are comparatively encouraged.